Douglas A. Fraser, 91, Union Chief Who Helped Chrysler, Is Dead

DETROIT — Douglas A. Fraser, who as president of the United Automobile Workers union agreed to concessions that helped the Chrysler Corporation avoid bankruptcy in the late 1970s, died late Saturday. He was 91.

Mr. Fraser died at Providence Hospital in suburban Southfield, Mich., his wife, Winifred, said Sunday. He had emphysema.

Mrs. Fraser said he had donated his body to the medical school at Wayne State University in Detroit, where Mr. Fraser taught after retiring from the union in 1983. No funeral was planned, though a memorial service will be held later, she said.

Mr. Fraser, known as Doug to factory workers and corporate chairmen alike, led the union from 1977 to 1983, a period of intense turmoil in the American automobile industry.

Rapidly rising fuel prices and surging sales of fuel-efficient Japanese cars had produced huge financial losses at the Detroit auto companies, particularly at Chrysler, which was heavily dependent on large automobiles.

As Chrysler ran short of cash and faced possible bankruptcy, Mr. Fraser was instrumental in helping to arrange legislation that provided the $1.2 billion in federally guaranteed loans that put Chrysler back on its feet.

The deal called for hourly workers at Chrysler to accept wage cuts of $3 an hour and gave the company permission to cut nearly half of its 100,000 jobs in the United States.

Lee A. Iacocca, then the chief executive at Chrysler, nominated Mr. Fraser as a company director in 1980, making him the first labor leader to join the board of an American automobile company.

Mr. Fraser, however, stressed that he represented Chrysler’s workers, not himself. He was the lone dissenting vote when the board gave generous stock options to Chrysler executives, including Mr. Iacocca.

Although he had little formal education, Mr. Fraser was an avid reader, known for discussing economics with corporate executives, voting patterns with political officials and shop floor issues with factory workers. In contrast to his successors, who shunned the news media that followed the union, Mr. Fraser was fond of calling journalists to discuss their articles, occasionally correcting them on matters of union history.

(In a call last month to The New York Times, Mr. Fraser, in commenting on an article on Toyota Motor, remarked, “I hate them — because they’re so good.”)

He had an impish sense of humor that was often on display when negotiating pressure was the highest. Angered at comments by Roger B. Smith, the General Motors chief executive, during a pivotal point in negotiations in 1982, Mr. Fraser declared that he wanted G.M. to get a “zipper for Roger Smith’s lips.”

Union officials were not spared, either. When one union delegate persisted in demanding attention at a meeting, Mr. Fraser, who was presiding, stood and threw his chair at the delegate.

Membership in the United Automobile Workers was at its peak of 1.5 million in 1978, a year after Mr. Fraser took charge, but the industry soon faced dire times as an energy crisis led to the rising sales of Japanese automobiles.

Along with a deal at Chrysler that cut workers’ wages by $3 an hour, to $17, Mr. Fraser subsequently agreed to deals at G.M. and Ford Motor that temporarily froze wages and cost-of-living adjustments.

Photo

Douglas A. FraserCredit
Jerry S. Mendoza/Associated Press, 2005

He tried to persuade executives at G.M. to negotiate an agreement that would link concessions by workers to lower prices for G.M. cars, in an effort to stimulate sales.

The plan collapsed on the details. But in later years, Mr. Fraser said the initiative had demonstrated that the union was prepared to be creative even in difficult times. “We didn’t quite get there,” he said, “but conceptually, it was a great idea.”

Douglas Andrew Fraser was born in Glasgow on Dec. 18, 1916, and was brought to the United States when he was 6 years old. His father, Samuel Douglas Fraser, was an ardent unionist, and talk of union activities was common fare at the dinner table.

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“I suppose you could say I belonged to the union before I went to work, because we talked about it all the time,” he said.

To the disappointment of his father, who had wanted him to go to college, Mr. Fraser dropped out of high school in 1934 and went to work in small factories in the Detroit area. He was fired from his first two jobs for trying to organize fellow workers. “At the second place, they broke into my toolbox and found authorization cards, so they found a way to fire me,” he said.

He found a job at a DeSoto plant owned by Chrysler that had been organized by the U.A.W. and rose rapidly in the ranks of the union, becoming a local president at 27. After three terms, he was hired in 1947 as a member of the union’s international staff.

He came to the attention of Walter P. Reuther, a longtime leader who had become president of the union after World War II. Mr. Reuther appointed him as an administrative assistant in 1951, a position that put him at Mr. Reuther’s side as the union helped set the social agenda of the nation in the 1950s and 1960s.

In a series of victories, the union won benefits like company-paid health and dental care, income assistance for workers who had been laid off, pensions and cost-of-living adjustments.

Mr. Reuther began grooming Mr. Fraser to succeed him, and Mr. Fraser became a member of the union’s executive board in 1962 and a vice president in 1970.

But when Mr. Reuther died in an airplane crash in 1970 at the age of 62, another vice president, Leonard Woodcock, narrowly defeated Mr. Fraser for the presidency. Mr. Fraser succeeded Mr. Woodcock in 1977.

Mr. Fraser said he tried to pattern his leadership after that of Mr. Reuther, who saw the union as a conduit for social activism.

The union’s current president, Ron Gettelfinger, said Sunday: “Doug was a friend, a mentor and a counselor to so many within the U.A.W. and the larger labor movement. His integrity and his enduring commitment to protecting the rights of workers will continue to inspire us.”

After he retired from the union, Mr. Fraser turned to teaching at Wayne State in Detroit, as well as at Harvard University, the University of Michigan and Columbia Business School, where he was labor leader in residence for three years.

He said he enjoyed the repartee with students, but was appalled by how little they knew about Mr. Reuther and labor history. After one seminar at Columbia, Mr. Fraser said a student came up to him and remarked, “I must admit you do not fit the stereotype of a labor leader.”

Mr. Fraser asked the student what the stereotype involved.

“Well, an overweight guy who smokes cigars and uses a great deal of profanity,” the student responded.

“Young man, you have just described Lee Iacocca,” Mr. Fraser said he had told the student.

Mr. Fraser’s first wife, Eva Falk, died in 1970. He is survived by his second wife, Winifred; his daughters, Jeanne Fraser and Judith Yonich; stepdaughters, Barbara MacKenzie and Sandra Bryner; and several grandchildren.

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